she wonders how long before her / own body knows it is the keeper / of treasures and her mortal soul has / endless chances to get things right.

Norah waited six months for her husband to return from Vietnam. Every morning, she wondered if David was alive, or half-alive, or if he was a corpse, or the remains of a man who couldn’t be identified because David was always losing things and had most likely lost his ID tag in the depths of a jungle which, in one of her nightmares, had swallowed David whole.